Animation Tip: Making Links in Flash

Want to breathe some life in to your website? You need to get animated!

Here we are with another helpful animation tip for Macromedia Flash. This time around, you will learn how to link your Flash animations to another website.

In a previous lesson, you lerned how to make a simple button. Let's go through that step again here quickly, and then show you how to link that button to another website.

Importing a Button

Let's say you've created a beautiful animation like this one. (Animation hint: explosions are always good!) That's all very well and good, but now what? As impressed as your audience will be by your pyrotechnic skills, they're going to get bored and want something new really soon.

The easiest way to get your viewers moving on is to give them a clickable button that takes them to a new site. First, import a small graphic by selecting Import under the File menu. Then, turn that graphic into a button by clicking on Insert -- Convert to Symbol. When Flash ask you what sort of symbol to make it, choose Button.

You can alter the button slightly to give it that "I'm being pressed" feel. Double click the button. Under the Definitions tab, select the little pencil icon to edit your button. In the new window that comes up, put keyframes under Over, Down, and Hit. With the Over keyframe selected, move your graphic slightly up and to the right. Then select the Down keyframe and move the graphic down and to the left. Now go back to your main scene.

Tell Your Button Where to Go

Now that you've got your button, you just need to tell it where you want to go. Right-click on the button (control-click for Macs) and select Properties. Under the actions tab, click the plus sign and select Tell Target from the pull-down menu. In the box on the right, type in the address you want the button to link to. You can set the button on your animation to go to your homepage. That's all there is to it. Now, when visitors to your site play your animation, they can go wherever you want them to!